Hon­or­ing Levi Samp- son’s life

SPAN­ISH FORK -- This past year has been a true test of the heart. There are some things that just can’t be found in the hand­book of life and must be lived and learned through our own ex­pe­ri­ence. As we seek to un­der­stand why some things hap­pen, we usu­ally find more ques­tions. This is one of life’s great­est rid­dles.

The ques­tion we can all ask our­selves is, “can I find good in the face of ad­ver- sity?”

There is good in all of us and we need to hold to this per­spec­tive. Do­ing good is the only thing con­stant that we can truly count on.

Af­ter los­ing our son Levi last year a week be­fore his 3rd birthday, our en- tire world seemed to crum­ble. Noth­ing made sense. There was chaos, heartache and mis­ery at ev­ery cor­ner. The defin­ing mo­ment came the morn­ing af­ter we had lost him. My wife and I were sit­ting in our bed­room watch­ing the sun­rise af­ter a sleep­less night. As we stared at the sun- beams of first light, it was very clear to us that this ex­pe­ri­ence had the power to de­stroy every­thing good in our life. The only thing stand­ing be­tween us and mis- er­able tor­ment was the power of choice. We could choose to see the good or choose to see our life un­ravel.

Our fam­ily, our friends, and our com- mu­nity have been the rea­son we have been able to make it through this first year. We would like to ex­press our grat­i­tude for ev­ery prayer, ev­ery kind word, and ev­ery em­brace we have re­ceived from so many. You have loved us when we have needed it most and you have in­spired us to "Do Good" in the midst of our great­est trial.